A blog by a British Muslim girl

Metropolitan Police

Complete anarchy seems to have been unleashed at nighttime on to the streets of London and other cities around England. The video of a bleeding teenager being robbed by passers by (which has now been removed from YouTube but can be seen on the Telegraph website) shows the sheer immorality, selfishness and wickedness of some of these vandals that have been causing all this violence in our cities. With no disregard for other people’s properties, businesses or lives, we have to question and understand why this lack of empathy and disregard for the law, exists.I’ve heard many of these youths are committing these crimes as a way of protesting against the police. It is there way of getting back at the police, which they believe are racist. It is certainly true that black men are stopped and searched more than any other minority group. Harrowing as it maybe to be constantly accused of being a criminal, does it justify the violence we’ve seen in the last 3 days? No, but it may help us understand the motives of the initial perpetrators. The jury seems to be out on the fact that the looters in the last two night are solely opportunists trying to steal as many goods as they can.After Saturday night’s riots in Tottenham, the police’s ‘softly softly’ approach provoked these delinquents into going one step further. They must have realised that the police are not actually going to use any force. You can go and hurl a stone at a policeman and he would stand there and not retaliate. I saw this on television myself. This gave them the green light to start spreading their violence across London. If there are too many rioters and not enough police then really they can do what they want. And they have. It is truly despicable.Finally this afternoon the Metropolitan Police have said that they are prepared to use batons and plastic bullets. I think they should go further than that. These people have shown they are fearless animals who don’t care about the police. Perhaps a warning and then half an hour later teargas? That may keep them away.

Most importantly, where are the parents of all these kids? Why are they not questioning the whereabouts of their children? On the other hand, if your eighteen year old wants to go out, you can’t physically stop them from walking out the door. But some of these kids are younger. Do parents have such little control over their kids, these days?

David Cameron was right, we live in a broken society, and now we are suffering the consequences. Let’s hope Cameron can do something more than he already has -which is actually nothing, to sort this country out. In the meantime, let’s pray for London.